


How Did This Shit Happen?

by PsiRadish



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Slow Burn, Slow Burn on Fast Forward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-04-21 08:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22057567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsiRadish/pseuds/PsiRadish
Summary: It wasn't overnight, obviously.  There were steps.  Milestones.  Over years.  But still... Gideon Nonagesimus?
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 9
Kudos: 105





	1. Attraction

**Author's Note:**

> AU Deets: Different peeps died. Different peeps lyctored. Our peeps came home. Further details revealed as they become relevant (at which point they may be made up on the spot).

_Home, pestiferous home._

Gideon ran once again through her well-trodden mental list of things that made being back in Drearburh not so bad. 

  1. Harrow actually seemed pretty determined not to be a heinous bitch anymore. 
  2. Gideon would _officially_ be Harrow’s cavalier, with all the rank and privelege that entailed. All the rank and privelege in the world didn’t mean much when that world was The Ninth, but it _did_ mean she would outrank Crux. 
  3. Food. Gideon insisted she would only return to Drearburh if they brought real food _and_ a cook with them. Harrow looked at Gideon like she’d never heard of anything called “taste” before and half suspected Gideon of making it up, but persuant to point 1 she still relayed the request to the Emperor. 

Thinking of Harrow, Gideon unconsciously turned to look at her as she silently commanded skeletons to unload the shuttle’s cargo of much-needed supplies (not _all_ of it food) for The Ninth. Doubtlessly, Harrow was reveling in her triumph, and/or dominion, and/or… well, _something_, because she certainly seemed pleased with herself. Which is why Gideon flinched. 

Harrow noticed. “What?!” she demanded. 

“What?” Gideon artfully deflected back. 

“You keep looking at me and,” Harrow did a kind of unhappy-jazz-hands thing, “flinching.” 

With what she would never admit was a pout, Gideon countered, “_You_ keep smiling.” 

Harrow made… faces, and crossed her arms. “And that’s a problem?” 

“You’re _pretty_ when you smile,” Gideon said like it was offensive – because it _was_. “Healing is, like, a process, right? It’s _way_ too early for me to deal with finding you attractive.” 

Harrow uncrossed her arms and, after what seemed to be careful thought, said, “Oh.” On anyone else Gideon would have called her body language for the next few seconds ‘preening’. “I see.” And then she fucking smiled again. 

Gideon let out a squawk meant to communicate something like, “What the hell, did you not hear what I just said, you fucking monster?” 

“Oh, don’t be a baby, Griddle. If it really bothers you so much, then keep your eyes closed. Fairest solution for both of us, really.” 

“You _would_ think that’s… Wait, what do you mean, ‘for both of us’?” 

“You won’t have to see me smile, and I won’t have to see your eyes.” Gideon just stared at her blankly, but Harrow seemed to expect this. “Your eyes are quite lovely, Nav. I’ve always thought so. And I’ve been ‘dealing with it’ for years.” 

Gideon was gobsmacked. She echoed, with no conscious decision on her part (and no small amount of horror), “Lovely.” 

“Lovely,” Harrowhawk confirmed. With a _smirk_. 

A smirk that was kind of hot. 

* * *

“No, no; I can do this. I was born here; I grew up here; I know this place like the back of my hand – if my hand were a festering, necrotic limb waiting to be amputated. I definitely don’t need–” 

Gideon’s face collided with stone. Again. 

“Damn it, Gideon, open your fucking eyes.” 


	2. Enjoying Each Other's Company

Aiglamene entered the reverend apartments without ceremony and, as soon as she set eyes on Harrowhark Nonagesimus, began speaking. 

“I am your retainer and was your mother’s retainer and that means nothing to you.” It was not a question. 

“Aiglamene,” Harrow pleasantly acknowledged. “Gideon was offered the freedom you vouchsafed; she chose to return to the Ninth. But here, you don’t have to take my word for it.” Turning to the years-vacant cavalier primary quarters perpendicular to her own, she called, “Gideon.” 

Turning in the same direction, Aiglamene saw a skeleton carrying a dusty pre-Resurrection firearm into the room before Gideon emerged from it. 

“Yes, my supreme Harrowhark, hallowed be thy name, Macabre Queen of Darkness?” Gideon orated, with a fanciful bow once she stood before the Reverend Daughter. 

Harrow took a moment to respond. “I like that one,” she finally said. This seemed to make Gideon begin looking through her pockets for something. Harrow sighed. “Don’t bother; you forgot it.” She then pointed at a skeleton who was holding a small notebook and pen. 

Gideon took the items with an, “Oh. Thanks, Benny.” Then she too pointed at the skeleton and asked Harrow, “That is Benny, right?” 

Harrow shrugged. “Sure, why not?” 

“You’re not just saying that; that’s really the one I named Benny?” 

“Absolutely.” 

“Cool. Okay.” Gideon opened the notebook and prepared to write, then looked up. “What was it? I forgot.” 

With perfect patience, the Reverend Daughter repeated, “My supreme Harrowhark, hallowed be thy name, Macabre Queen of Darkness.” 

“O…kay…” Gideon said as she appeared to write it down. “How do you spell ‘macabre’?” 

Harrow scowled and crossed her arms, then just as quickly uncrossed them and unscowled. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Griddle, you already know; you have always been better at spelling than me.” 

“You admit it!” Gideon shouted in triumph. 

A pair of skeletons dropped the mattress they were carrying, and when Gideon turned at the sound, they raised their hands to offer Gideon a sum total of four middle fingers. This sent Gideon into a bout of cackling laughter, and the Reverend Daughter, watching her lost-in-mirth cavalier, smiled a tiny, pleased little smile. 

Once recovered, Gideon asked Harrow, “So what did you call me for, anyway?” 

Harrow waved a hand towards Aiglamene. “Aiglamene wanted to talk to you about–” 

“Oh, Aiglamene!” Gideon turned to her in surprise. “I didn’t know you were here.” 

“Clearly,” Aiglamene responded; absolutely slathering the word in dryness. 

Gideon appeared unfazed. “Feels like it’s been forever! I’d hug you, if hugging was a thing I’d ever done before in my life, and if I didn’t think the shock would probably kill you.” She did give Aiglamene a brilliantly awkward pat on the shoulder, however, and it was most likely a desire to forget this attempt at physical affection rather than actual curiousity that compelled her to ask, “Sooo what did you want to talk about?” 

Aiglamene looked from Gideon’s slightly embarassed but still grinning face, to Harrow’s still-maybe-smiling-just-a-little-bit face, and back to Gideon’s. “Nevermind,” she answered, before bowing briefly to Harrowhark and leaving as swiftly as she had arrived. 

What she had just witnessed left her with little doubt that Gideon _had_ in fact chosen to return to the Ninth. And, though it had been a very, _very_ long time since Aiglamene was a teenager, she also had little doubt that it would be about a week – two tops – before Gideon was no longer sleeping in her new room. 

* * *

“Hey, now that I outrank her, you think I could get away with calling Aiglamene ‘Iggy’?” 

Harrow just stared at Gideon. 

“Right. Stupid question.” 


	3. Dealing With Old Baggage

_Ensure their bones will be prepared by my aunts and I, _without_ witnesses: Check._ That only left about… forty more things for Harrow to do today if she wanted to be Reverend Lady before the first ship of new immigrants arrived. 

“So is the Emperor basically a co-conspirator at this point?” asked a voice from half a step behind her. 

Harrow was startled and, a moment later, disgusted to learn that Gideon was so near. But another moment later she remembered, and hated herself for forgetting, and felt a growing desire to scream and cry like a child because this had been happening all day. 

“You did use his comms to _arrange_ things–” Gideon’s voice halted, then continued with, “Are you alright?” 

“No,” Harrow said before she could stop herself. “I–” Suddenly she was moving. To a door, she realized as she was opening it. There was someone already in the room, doing... whatever-the-fuck. “Fuck off,” she told them. 

They fucked off. 

She closed the door behind Gideon, then set to bullying her thought-to-feeling ratio into a balance that was more conducive to coherent expression; a task that made for good – some of her best – hunched, angry pacing. 

“So…,” Gideon began cautiously, and suddenly coherency could go fuck itself because Harrow needed to speak _now_, or she would die. 

“This… _place_!” Harrow felt her arms gesture forcefully. “I hated you here; learned to hate you here; taught myself to hate you here. These halls and walls and doors and fucking rooms are where I hated you for almost twenty years! Where I couldn’t imagine _not_ hating you, only I don’t _have to_ imagine; I just have to _remember_, but I _don’t_! Without you right in front of my _fucking_ face this place makes me forget and remember and turn back into a monster who hates you again!” She shook her head as soon as the last sentence was out, and corrected, “Who hates herself _at_ you!” 

“O-Okay, but... _with_ me right in front of your fucking face?” Gideon looked small and scared like Gideon never should, and Harrow was relieved that she took no joy in it; that the monster was (for now) locked in her tomb again. 

Tentatively, she took Gideon’s hands – which managed to feel almost _half_ as weird as it would have a month ago (progress!) – and as calmly as she could answered, “With you in front of me I remember; I cannot forget. But a half-step behind me, and this _place_ eventually convinces me; makes me forget; forget that you’re even _there_, behind me. Because how _could_ you be? It’s absurd! And when the absurd inevitably proves true again, it is not to me, but to _her_. And I _am_ her and I feel her hate and I want her to die.” 

In that moment Harrow wished she could do more than just hold Gideon’s hands. She wanted to press against her. She wanted to wrap herself in her. She wanted to rip her own soul out and bury it in Gideon’s body and never have to deal with herself again. 

Meanwhile, Gideon tried desperately to say something useful. “Wwhaaat if we keep holding hands, then?” she suggested, lifting one pair of their hands and shaking it as if Harrow needed to see an example. “Be pretty hard to forget I’m there with our hands sweating all over each other.” 

_Well, that would only be... terrible._ But the more Harrow thought about it, the more she still thought it would be terrible – of course – but also that it might work. 

When Harrow didn’t say anything, Gideon soon realized her necromancer was giving the idea actual consideration. She rapidly pulled her hands away, cradling them against her chest as if she feared for their safety. “No. No no no.” Pointing a finger at Harrow now like she was scolding a pet, she added, “No! That was _not_ a real idea; stop thinking about it _right now_!” 

It was perfectly okay and normal to enjoy irritating your friends. Harrowhark knew this because she’d (discretely) conducted a poll while aboard the Emperor’s ship, and eight of the ten crew members queried said so (and Harrow suspected one of the two dissenters only disagreed to be irritating). So the fact that Gideon’s vehement objections were only making her idea _more_ appealing was something Harrow felt no need to inspect, or resist. 

Which must have shown on her face, because Gideon suddenly deflated with a morose, “I thought you were done torturing me.” 

Harrow’s smile – for she was in fact smiling – grew a little bigger. “Never, Nav. It will simply be much kinder torture from now on.” 

“Kinder. Torture.” Gideon seemed to doubt the words. 

“The kindest,” Harrow confirmed, then offered the crook of her arm for Gideon to take. “See? This should be better than ‘our hands sweating all over each other’.” 

Gideon looped their arms together with a deep, theatrical sigh. “Only because I know this’ll be just as awkward for you, Nonagesimus.” 

* * *

“That wasn’t so bad,” Harrowhark declared; trying as hard as she could to _really_ mean it. 

It _did_ work. It was supremely uncomfortable for everyone – both witnesses and participants – involved, but it worked, and Harrow mostly considered that a fair trade. 

“Oh, no, not bad at all,” Gideon agreed with false lightness. “I mean, everyone who saw us totally thinks we’re fucking now, but so long as you don’t consider that ‘bad’...” 


	4. Becoming More Than Friends

In the past week Gideon had managed to make Harrow laugh twice, and it might be an understatement to say she’d rather liked it. It was significantly more pleasant than the cartoon-witch laughter she might have imagined just a month ago. Harrow – surprisingly enough – laughed like an actual person. 

_A beautiful person. An unfairly beautiful person. A–_ With great relief Gideon managed to stop that train of thought before it arrived at the word ‘mesmerizingly’. _Stop going goo-goo for past-Harrow when you’ve got present-Harrow in front of you about to crack again._

Making Harrowhark Nonagesimus laugh was a bit like waging war. Or at least laying siege. Although, with the kind of caution it required, it was maybe more like diffusing a bomb. Except _not_ diffusing but setting it off. But still _like_ diffusing because the bomb was fucking hard to set off, so… maybe _making_ a bomb would have been a better analogy. Or not. Whatever; fuck analogies. 

It was hard to make Harrow laugh. Gideon had to be continuously, _amazingly_ funny for, like, a solid twenty laugh-less minutes before Harrow would suddenly _erupt_ like a volcano of mirth and gaiety. Fantastic reward, totally worth it, but very difficult to attain on purpose. 

Fortunately, Gideon had figured out Harrow’s I-might-be-about-to-laugh face. Her eyes would get bright – somehow (bright black was a thing; Harrow made it a thing) – and her mouth all twitchy, and sometimes her nose would do a thing. All of which bore an unfortunate similarity to her I’m-trying-not-to-be-furious-with-you face, but Gideon was mostly confident she could tell the difference (she’d only gotten it wrong once). 

Presently, Harrow’s eyes were burning bright as Dominicus, she had to use her teeth to keep her mouth still, and her nose was doing the (fucking cute) thing, like, constantly. She was on the brink; clinging to her last shred of a thread of resistance; awaiting the killstroke, Gideon’s coup de grace. 

“Tourism, Harrow! Just think,” Gideon mimed reading a brochure, “‘You and your family can have your faces painted by actual Shadow Cultists! (Capital S, capital C, trademark symbol.) Pray alongside actual Shadow Cultists that the tomb is shut forever and the rock is never rolled away! Live like a Shadow Cultist of old at our hotel where the only food is snow leek and the soap is made of human fat!’ Oh, and outside the tomb we could sell shirts that say, ‘I went to the Locked Tomb and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.’” 

It did the trick. Happy Harrow was back. 

Happy Harrow was absolutely Gideon’s new favorite thing, _probably_ excluding her sword. Happy Harrow robbed Gideon of all thought. Happy Harrow _flooded_ Gideon with all thoughts. Happy Harrow made Gideon re-evaluate everything, ever. Happy Harrow reshaped Gideon’s notions of what was possible; what was likely; maybe what was inevitable. Happy Harrow was a fucking revelation. 

When she was done laughing, Harrow continued to grin in an almost-pretty-much-just-as-distracting fashion, so it took Gideon several seconds to notice Harrow was meeting her gaze; watching her watch Harrow; with a raised eyebrow, no less. “Three times is a trend,” she said. 

“Hmmwhat?” Gideon articulated. 

“I laugh; you stare. Gawk, even. Surely it’s not surprise anymore.” 

“Uh, no. Not surprise.” 

Harrow leaned back in her chair. “What is it, then?” 

Fresh off the high of making Harrow laugh and still under the influence of its revelations, Gideon found herself beginning the long walk to an honest answer. “It took.” 

Curiosity advanced to confusion on Harrow’s face. “What?” 

“You. Being trustworthy. Being…,” her hands wheeled in little circles, “…_good_. It stuck. Even after I kind of pissed you off that time–” 

“Kind of?” Harrow interrupted, (thankfully) still amused. 

“Alright, totally – but accidentally! – pissed you off. You didn’t drop a hundred skeletons on me; we handled it like… mother-fucking grown-ups and shit.” 

“Eloquently put,” Harrow said only-slightly-mockingly, since she was after all being complemented. 

“The point is,” Gideon said faux-sternly, only to pause as she realized she was at the precipice. 

“Yes?” Harrow prompted. 

Gideon looked away, and wondered what would be hardest to say. “I trust you. I believe that things will not go back to how they were. Aaand that seems to make me pretty okay with, y’know, finding you attractive now.” She really wanted to know how Harrow was reacting to that, but she had one last thing to say, and if she looked at Harrow again she might not say it. “You’re beautiful when you laugh.” 

Gideon should have stopped _there_ – it would have been basically perfect – but apparently even she couldn’t make herself shut up sometimes. 

“And you really shouldn’t be, with the douche paint on and everything, but,” a shrug, “I don’t know; maybe I’ve adapted to it or something. Or maybe you’re just that pretty.” She mentally cringed extra-hard at having said the last thing out loud, before finally looking at Harrow again. 

Harrow looked a little bit annoyed (maybe at “douche paint”, but that was just a guess), and a whole lot oh-shit-is-she-about-to-cry-quick-distract-her-by-saying-something-stupid. “I want to kiss you, sometimes,” Gideon blurted. _Oh, fuckshit._ “I… I mean… sometimes.” _Yep, that made it better._

Harrow’s face did change, at least. A few seconds of shock, but then a scowl as she turned back to her desk. She glared at a piece of flimsy on it long enough for Gideon to worry she might actually be reading it (or trying to) and ignoring her (or trying to). 

“Um…” 

That was when Harrow suddenly slapped her hands down on the desk; elbows slightly up. She held that position for a second, then pushed herself up from the chair and marched the four steps to where Gideon was leaning inside the doorframe. Her eyes held Gideon’s with bruising force, and with great care but _ridiculous_ intensity she said, “You have permission.” 

Gideon felt stupid for being somehow a little surprised. _You’ve met Harrow, right? When _isn’t_ she aggressive?_ Then again, maybe she was surprised that Harrow actually wanted to kiss her. Maybe she should ask; make sure. 

“To kiss you?” 

With the same (if not more) intensity, “Yes. You have permission to kiss me.” 

Wetting her lips, Gideon observed, “You say ‘permission’ but the vibe I’m getting is ‘orders’.” 

Her pulse quickened as Harrow’s hands rose to her face, only for them to smush her cheeks. “Gideon Nav, you are _so_ smart.” 

Hearing those words from Harrowhark Nonagesimus’ mouth gave Gideon full-body shivers of the not-good kind. “Oh, that is fucking creepy! Never say that again!” she demanded through fish lips. 

Harrow arched an eyebrow. “Stop me.” 

With an annoyed sigh (that was completely and utterly false), Gideon did. 

* * *

“Note to self: use less tongue when Harrow’s wearing that shit on her face. Blech.” 

“You weren’t complaining at the time.” 

Gideon shrugged. “I guess you kiss more good than that shit tastes bad,” she said, completely unselfconsciously. “Now, though: blech.” 

Harrow let out an unreverendly snort, then tremorously asked, “I kiss more good?” before collapsing into laughter for the second time in a day (hell, in an _hour_). 

Wanting to minimize the time her eyes spent _not_ devouring the sight of a (once again) uncomplicatedly-happy-Harrow, Gideon’s eye-roll was only cursory. But then a thought occurred to her, and with it an urgent question. 

“That paint isn’t made of people like the soap used to be, is it?” 


End file.
